The proposed pilot work will lay the groundwork for a larger study on wisdom designed to explore its developmental and structural features. Such work is important if we are to develop a comprehensive model of adult cognition which takes into consideration growth as well as decline and stability in adult cognitive development, and which views cognition as adaptation to the demands of life. Wisdom is defined as expert problem solving in the domain of life tasks which have developmental import, and hence an understanding of wisdom will broaden our understanding of cognition in later life. The pilot work will proceed in three phases. In the first, stories about tasks with developmental relevance to each of three age groups will be constructed. In the second phase, a set of nine such stories (three for each group) will be constructed and sent to 30 experts in life-span developmental psychology to rate them each for (1) their developmental appropriateness and (2) the complexity of the problem. Based on these responses, a set of three such stories, one for each age group, comparable on these two rated dimensions, will be chosen, and submitted to three linguistics experts to judge them for comparability of linguistic complexity. Where necessary the stories will be adjusted appropriately and re-rated by the experts. Finally, in phase three, 15 pilot subjects (5 young, 5 middle-aged, and 5 older) will be tested. They will be administered the stories along with a series of structured probe questions designed to tap five criteria of wisdom. Their responses will allow for an exploration of procedural issues, and allow for any appropriate adjustments. The proposed work will pave the way for more systematic exploration of the developmental form of wisdom, its antecedents, and its differentiation from other forms of intelligent adaptation.